easy solution. I could find no reply to them. Captain Prendergast
had not even a suggestion to offer. Jonathan Jelf, who seized the
first opportunity of drawing me aside and learning all that I had
to tell, was more amazed and bewildered than either of us. He
came to my room that night, when all the guests were gone, and we
talked the thing over from every point of view; without, it must
be confessed, arriving at any kind of conclusion.

"I do not ask you," he said," whether you can have mistaken your
man. That is impossible."

"As impossible as that I should mistake some stranger for yourself."

"It is not a question of looks or voice, but of facts. That he
should have alluded to the fire in the blue room is proof enough
of John Dwerrihouse's identity. How did he look?"

"Older, I thought; considerably older, paler, and more anxious."

He has had enough to make him look anxious, anyhow, "said my friend,
gloomily, "be he innocent or guilty."

"I am inclined to believe that he is innocent," I replied. "He showed
no embarrassment when I addressed him, and no uneasiness when the
guard came round. His conversation was open to a fault. I might
almost say that he talked too freely of the business which he had
in hand."

"That again is strange, for I know no one more reticent on such
subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand